


Don't Want The World To See Me

by icarus_chained



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/M, Good Cop Bad Cop, Hope, Kissing, Prompt Fic, Watching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 01:50:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/633813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, when you watch someone else, they look back. And then they see.</p>
<p>A tiny Joss/Lionel ficlet, for the prompt of <i>You're the closest to Heaven that I've ever been</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Want The World To See Me

**Author's Note:**

> Set post S1 finale, but I'm not caught up on S2 yet.

He watched her a lot. Carter. _Joss_. And most of that was habit, the paranoid left-overs of having to keep an eye on her for their mutual friends, for HR, for himself and his secrets. Most of it was just old habits.

But not all of it.

"What?" she asked him, one day. When he hadn't been as circumspect as usual, staring calf-eyed or something at her over his desk. Like he could _afford_ that shit. "Lionel? What?"

He shook his head quickly, mustering up a dismissive smirk and an absent twitch of his head. "Nothing," he said, with a smile to make it less abrupt, a faint curve of his lip as she shot him that skeptical, uh-huh expression she did so well. Practice, and their mutual friends. "Just thinking, you know?"

"Yeah?" she asked, coming over to prop a hip on his desk. A few months ago, the question would have been challenging, suspicious. Now, she was just asking to share the joke. To be let in, and damn, Lionel understood that one. Did he ever. "What about?"

He looked down. Tracing the curve of her hip beside his coffee mug, biting his lip and letting a faint, mildly rueful smile crease his face. Like he was going to answer _that_ one. "Nothing, like I said. Just ... It feels good being on the side of angels sometimes."

She pulled her head back, that weird smiling frown of hers, half-skeptical and half-amused. "What, you mean John? What we're doing, like that?"

No. Well, yes, sort of, not exactly. They weren't angels, those two. Well, the little guy, maybe. He had an air of battered innocence about him, a bleeding heart who got kicked enough times that he started sitting up and fighting back. But not the suit. Lionel knew him, the way he knew himself. No angels, oh no. Just bad men trying, for once in their lives, to be right. 

He didn't mean them. He didn't mean the job, though it was close, for all the pain and fear and waiting for the other damn shoe to drop. He didn't mean being a right man, though that was ... more than he'd thought he could be for a long, long time.

If he was honest, if he was _completely_ honest, which he tried not to be too often ... He meant her. He meant that hip perched on his desk, he meant that look in her eyes, soft and calm and capable, righteous but withholding judgement. He meant Detective Joss Carter, who was the kind of cop he'd stopped being a _long_ time ago, and was too soiled now to ever be again. The kind of cop he hadn't thought he could even work with again, until her. Until she started to matter as more than just a target, someone to spy on. Until she started being a _partner_.

If there was ever a side of angels, it was whatever side she was on. And that was a damned stupid thing to be thinking, but Lionel wasn't going to be responsible for the shit that popped up in the privacy of his own head.

"Yeah," he said instead, agreeing with her mostly for the sake of being able to. Smiling lopsidedly up into the echo on her face, and the faintly skeptical furrow between her eyes that still didn't accuse him. "Though, you know. You're pretty hot yourself, Detective Carter."

She laughed, then. Just a quick flash of delight, rueful and self-depreciating and appreciative despite herself, and Lionel felt his smile grow wider, felt it spread into a grin. Grinning stupidly up at her, the warmth of her eyes and the faint gleam of her teeth. Letting her ... letting her _see_.

Oh, fuck _him_. Of all the stupid things to do in this job, this life, he had to go and fall in love with his partner. With a right cop, after all that he'd done. Because of _course_. Every tiny step, every creeping change since the goddamn man in the suit busted into his life. Naturally he ended up in love with her. What the hell else was he gonna do?

And she stopped. She stopped laughing, sharp eyes catching the change in his face, the warmth and the shame and the rueful resignation. She caught that, because Detective Joss Carter was a damn sharp woman, a damn good cop, and she saw. Of course she did.

"Sorry," Lionel offered, because there wasn't a lot else he could do. "Probably don't mean much. But ... I really am sorry." 

For one whole hell of a lot, he thought, and he honestly hoped she never knew the half of it. But this. Yeah, also this. With everything he was, and everything she was, and all the things she didn't need from him. He was sorry for this. For letting her see.

She stared at him, that furrow gone deep and confused, questioning, maybe alarmed. Nah. Not that. She wouldn't be afraid of him. But something, anyway.

And then ... then her expression cleared. A squall across it, consideration and confusion and a vague lightening, and she looked around quickly. Scanned the bullpen around them, taking quick and businesslike stock of those close by.

And when she was done, when she'd realised that the only other person in the room was nose-down in a report and muttering faintly to himself ... she leaned in. She touched his collar lightly, an odd, strange smile on her face, and leaned down to softly brush his lips with hers while he stared at her in raw amazement.

"Don't be," she said, smiling crookedly as she pulled back, her hand still warm and solid under his slack jaw. "At least ... not yet, anyway."

Then she was gone, moving briskly and casually back across to her own desk, his coffee mug left lonely behind her, and Lionel slowly, carefully, shook his head. Awe and confusion and, somewhere deep down low, where he tried not to let things get to ... maybe even hopeful. A little bit. More than he'd ever dared before.

Yeah. If ever there was an angel for someone like him, some warrior guardian to keep a wrong cop right ... Detective Joss Carter was it. More a guardian angel than the suit had ever been, anyway. The closest ... the closest to Heaven he'd ever been.

And shit, he thought, leaning back and touching his thumb lightly to his lips. What the hell did _that_ say about him, huh?

Goddamn it anyway.


End file.
